"Hello, Miss Peggy," returned the girl with the bundle. "I brought home your mother's dress. Aunt Georgie couldn't get it finished any earlier."
"Mother gave you up for to-night, Myrtle. She left at eight o'clock, but I think I know where she put the money."
Peggy's conjecture proved correct. She brought out the amount of the dressmaker's bill, and having counted it before Myrtle's eyes, she folded the bills carefully and stuffed them into Myrtle's diminutive pocket book. "Shall you be glad when school opens, Myrtle?" she asked pleasantly.
"I'm not going to school any more, Miss Peggy."
"What! You're going to leave school?"
"Aunt Georgie can't afford to keep me any longer. Everything is so high," sighed the child, with a worldly-wise air that would have seemed funny had it not been so apparent that she knew what she was talking about.
"But you can't be nearly fourteen, Myrtle," protested Peggy. "And you were doing so well in school."
"I'm twelve in September, but Aunt Georgie can get permit for me to work, if she can't afford to keep me in school."
"Would you rather work than go to school?" asked Amy, rather tactlessly.